Teaching America’s kids important values and concepts as early as possible matters to me; I hope it does to you, too. I am not going to get political here, but it seems to me that what we decide to add or subtract from our schools in terms of reading material is an issue that many Americans are passionate about. I’m not here to talk about your thoughts on Critical Race Theory, so why am I bringing this up? Well, Steve Hunt (HOF father of Rob, featured in my book) gave me the bright idea that I should begin marketing my book to schools. More specifically, he felt that the book would be particularly impactful for middle school and high school students. I love the idea, and wanted to share it here for feedback/potentially some more exposure.
The book, ICYMI, is entitled Transcending Labels: The Power of Connecting with the Special Needs and Disabled Communities.
Here are a couple of core concepts that the book aims to get across:
- Involving yourself and getting to know individuals with special needs will have many positive impacts on your life
- Developing empathy for others / emotional intelligence
- Individuals with special needs, just like your other peers, are able to understand and communicate with you— they just might require you to be a little more patient in learning their methods of said communication
- Bottom line: spending time with individuals in these communities is worth your time
Recurring themes that I have been hearing for over a decade are, “it makes no sense that they don’t teach you that in school,” or “what’s the point of that being a class in our schools?” With that in mind, I feel that this would be a wonderful addition to our education system; my book would just be part of the lesson. Teachers could utilize it and ideally help students become more understanding, empathetic, and conscientiousness people in general from a young age.
As a side note, I am starting to brainstorm ideas on how I would personally structure a 2-4 week program for students with lesson plans around the book– the special education major in me couldn’t help myself. More to come on that 🙂
Two questions for you reading this:
- Do you believe these would be good concepts for students to learn / have as a part of their curriculum?
- How early should students be introduced to these ideas?
Please let me know via email at info@mitchjstevens.com OR direct message if you’re seeing this on social media!
PS— If you do feel that this would be
nefit our young people, great! If you also happen to know any connections at a school that might be able to start a conversation for me on this topic, please let me know about that via email, too 🙂
